Forum Systems Inc. announced today that leading European analyst firm KuppingerCole has named the company an Overall Leader in its July market analysis of API Security Management solutions.

Recognized as the only vendor in the API Management market “with a primary focus on security,” Forum Systems secured the top spot in both the Product Leadership and Innovation Leadership categories. This latest KuppingerCole report closely follows its Executive View titled, “Forum Sentry API Gateway,” which recommends Forum Systems for “evaluation by any organization looking for the highest grade of security and reliability for their API Management infrastructure.”

In his “Leadership Compass: API Security Management,” KuppingerCole Senior Analyst Alexei Balaganski cites “the API Economy as one of the most important current IT trends” and that “exposing and consuming APIs, which enables organizations to create new business models and connect with partners and customers, has tipped the industry towards adopting lightweight RESTful APIs.” He cautions, however, that “many organizations tend to underestimate the potential security challenges of opening up their APIs without a security strategy infrastructure in place.”

In examining the API Management solutions market, Balaganski places a strong emphasis on “API security and threat protection features” and notes that “exposing enterprise services as APIs is impossible without addressing various security challenges including support for various identity types, strong end-to-end communication security and threat protection.” To help organizations establish the most effective security strategy, he evaluated “existing integrated API Management solutions with an emphasis on security features” and considered “solutions that have been designed with security in mind from the very beginning to be superior to those products where security features have been added as an afterthought.”

Architected for deployment at the network edge, Forum Sentry is the industry’s only FIPS 140-2 and NIAP NDPP-certified API Gateway for enabling secure connectivity between users, applications and the cloud. In addition, Forum Systems holds the industry’s only patent for cryptographic acceleration of security processing.

Praising Forum Sentry as the only product “built upon the ‘security by design’ principle” and citing Forum Systems as the “only vendor consistently implementing the ‘security-first’ approach in their product” Balaganski selected Forum Systems as an Overall Leader in API Security Management. Notably, he positioned the company in the top spot in both the Product Leadership and Innovation Leadership categories.

Deeming Forum Sentry “a hardened locked-down appliance,” Balaganski celebrates Forum Systems’ flagship product for being “unique in its approach towards security by not allowing any third-party extensions or libraries, which ensures resilience against known and not yet discovered vulnerabilities.” Underscoring Forum Systems’ unprecedented focus on delivering a best-in-class API Gateway, he asserts that by “concentrating on a single technology solution, the company is able to deliver a highly integrated cutting edge product backed up by an excellent support service.”

“While ‘security-first’ is our founding principle and design approach, it’s also our business philosophy. When we engage with global enterprise organizations and the world’s most recognizable government agencies, we help them establish the most effective security infrastructure in order to run their businesses – because without security, there is no business,” said Mamoon Yunus, CEO of Forum Systems. “KuppingerCole rightly states that ‘innovation is what customers require’ in order ‘to provide new functionality to meet their evolving requirements.’ With innovation as one of our hallmarks, we will continue architecting the most advanced API and cloud gateways, so that organizations can successfully navigate SDN, IoT and other emerging technologies while ensuring business success.”

Forum Systems facilitates secure business integration for global enterprise customers in commercial, government and military sectors. Processing and securing more than 10 billion transactions per day worldwide, the company’s flagship Forum Sentry protects and accelerates data exchange and API service access across networks and business boundaries, significantly reducing the cost and complexity of centralizing security, identity and governance.

Unified solution for API and service security, access management and threat protection

“Security by design” architecture for maximum reliability

Supports a broad range of identity and access control standards, tokens, and credentials

About KuppingerCole

KuppingerCole, founded in 2004, is a leading Europe-based analyst company for identity focused information security, both in classical and in cloud environments. KuppingerCole stands for expertise, thought leadership, and a vendor-neutral view on these information security market segments, covering all relevant aspects like Identity and Access Management (IAM), Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC), IT Risk Management, Authentication and Authorization, Single Sign-On, Federation, User Centric Identity Management, eID cards, Cloud Security and Management, and Virtualization. For further information, please visit www.kuppingercole.com.